More Money, More Work

The recent gift of Procter and Gamble to Harvard is of special significance to the United States, to Harvard, and to that mammoth endeavor of our time, the Program for Harvard College. It represents the growing awareness of private industrial concerns that their own welfare--and the country's--can be best served by donating money to private universities to carry on their educational projects.

But this gift is of especial importance for Harvard. The educational program which it will finance was approved this past May after several years of careful study by committees of the Faculty. The groups were looking for a new curriculum that would provoke increased undergraduate interest. Though this change is, of course, not felt directly in the Summer School, it is representative of a growing desire in many American universities to alter their curricula in a similar manner.

A number of years ago Yale instituted its Scholar of the House program, in which a few high-ranking students study completely on their own during the senior year. Last year Dartmouth instituted a three-semester program which would allow students to take more courses and give them the feeling that college education was not merely a convention that had gone on and would continue in the same ritualized manner decade after decade. Brown is now quite at home in its IC (Identification and Criticism of Ideas) plan, an ingenious scheme of middle-sized seminars for freshmen and sophomores, with reading and discussion of the great ideas which at Harvard are doled out in large General Education lectures.

At Harvard, students have for years been mumbling about "independent study." Two years ago, a short-lived magazine called i.e., the Cambridge Review published a provocative issue on "Harvard 1956" which strongly advocates increased independent reading and small individual conferences between student and tutor (Harvard's name for an instructor who works with an individual or small groups outside the regular course plan). i.e. went so far as to demand an end to the lecture system, a suggestion at which most undergraduates balked, but generally the cry of i.e. was accepted as one bearing a good deal of merit. The CRIMSON itself came out repeatedly before and after this article with various plans for independent study, and the Faculty's powerful Committee on Educational Policy realized that this was probably the way to stimulate students to their highest capacities. This committee took an unusual amount of care in finding out what undergraduates really wanted in an educational program, and their research was exhausting. But finally, last February, they approved plans for release.

The response was nearly unanimous. What they had done was to presume every student to be in the Honors program until he flunked out of it on one of three tests: a sophomore essay, a junior general examination, or a senior examination, probably somewhat more specific in nature than junior year generals. The committee requested that tutroial be increased in importance, that it be counted more heavily in weighing the type of Honors degree with which the student would graduate, and that this tutorial be given on an individual rather than group basis, and by as many ranking Faculty members as possible. All junior and senior Honors students would take tutorial as a fourth course--for credit.

A Vote for Independence

It was obvious, then, that while still admitting the importance of the lecture system, the committee also acknowledged the wisdom of the desire for greater independent study with a tutor. This had always been a fundamental principle of the Honors program at Harvard, but had not always been practiced as such. The program for non-Honors students--those who fail the Sophomore and/or Junior test--was not quite so laudable: the Committee at first recommended special courses for non-Honors students, apparently somewhat pragmatically oriented. This feature was excised after a full Faculty discussion, and the non-Honors program remained but a plea for tutorial for non-Honors Seniors in the Houses (not now offered).

Before continuing, a few words as to the unique nature and position of Harvard's Honors program is perhaps in order. At the end of his Freshman year, a student signs up for Honors or for non-Honors. (This has been the practice until now; from now on, all Freshmen will be Honors candidates until they fail one of the three hurdles). The Honors student must take more courses than his non-Honors colleague, and is given, in many departments, individual tutorial. This consists of a weekly or fortnightly meeting with his tutor, when the two discuss the reading assigned by the tutor, or perhaps discuss a paper the student has written. Obviously informal, these meetings often develop into friendships between student and tutor (who may be a distinguished professor) which far outlast one's undergraduate career.

In these sessions, a student is forced to think quickly and clearly; he may not just sit back and take notes. At the end of the term the tutor writes a report on his tutee, which from now on will be fairly strongly weighted in a deciding his Honors candidacy. This sort of relationship continues in Sophomore tutorial and Junior tutorial, although some departments will continue to have students tutored in groups; in Senior year, every Honors candidate meets individually with a tutor, under whose guidance he writes a thesis.

About 40 per cent of the college is on the Dean's List each year; most of these students are enrolled in the Honors program. It is also observed that some of Harvard's most intelligent students are seldom on the Dean's List.

It is these students whom the Faculty hopes to attract with its new program. The Faculty feels frustrated by students who have read widely, who can interpret and analyze what they have read, who can turn out good prose when they are writing for themselves, but who are unable to do the sort of work which receives A's and B's. It is hoped that the new program will in some manner stimulate these men, in President Pusey's words, into "the keenest possible challenge."

To provide such a challenge, of course, the men who tutor must be good teachers; many eminent scholars are not. The new program's insistence on a greater number of high Faculty members is good, if these men are chosen with an eye to teaching. To effect this, and to hire a greater number of tutors, instructors and teaching fellows, a good deal of money is necessary. When the program was first announced, Dean Bundy asserted that it presented to the Faculty a "mandate" to find the necessary funds. With the aid of the Program for Har- vard College and, of course, Procter and Gamble, the mandate has been fulfilled.

Although corporation and large gift giving has been slow, alumni have responded wholeheartedly to the drive, which has centered its appeal on the importance of the success of the Program to all colleges in the United States. This argument ranks high on the list of "selling points" which alumni workers are given before they go out to solicit funds. The truth of it is readily apparent: as soon as Harvard, the wealthiest (in terms of endowment) college in the country, announced its drive, Yale, M.I.T., Brown, and a number of other schools followed suit with ambitious money-raising programs of their own.

But there is a long way to go. Over $30 million must be donated within the next ten months, and more gifts like the Procter and Gamble donation are sorely needed. But there is an optimism in the College that the forces of good will open their money-boxes. Meanwhile, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences looks to the years under the new curriculum as the most challenging that it and its students have ever experienced. Students, too, their mumblings at last realized, expect their education to be more engaging than ever. Let the recession, the summits, the drafts be damned: things look good for Harvard--and American higher education